Conventional distributed applications typically include one or more communication protocols between various components physically located on separate machines or logically located in remote segments or environments. Usually there are two logical pipes of communication: a data pipe that facilitates data exchange between applications and a metadata pipe communicating type information associated with the communicated data. The protocols facilitate or manage this exchange of the data and metadata. At the highest level, a protocol may be considered one form of an API (or Application Programming Interface). Typical APIs are difficult to modify to fit changing needs or applications and are often difficult to enforce in a distributed team environment. For example, various APIs may be defined and implemented during a long period of time by various teams across an enterprise on multiple platforms. Indeed, many enterprises include or utilize a plurality of different APIs to exchange metadata with various agents in order to traverse a hierarchy of managed resources.